Our health care system has been the innovator for the world. The rest of the world takes our discoveries and innovations to improve the life of its own citizens. That innovation and creativity is made and paid for in the USA.

I know from personal experience. I am alive because of a drug called Gleevec, owned and marketed by European company Novartis, but discovered and created in principal part by American doctors and scientists in Philadelphia, Chicago and the Pacific Northwest.

Gleevec costs almost $4000 a month here. It's virtually free in India (which rejected the patents) and much cheaper in Europe (which did not incur the development expense.) About 20% of the profits of Novartis come from Gleevec.

It's a fair point that this prize is for research done in the 80's. If circumstances have changed between now and then regarding the quality of research into medicine, there may be a fair point there that we are in a healthcare "crisis".

However, I don't think that is the case, and any advocate of healthcare "reform" must explain how he is going to deal the circumstances described by David in his post.

Not really. Nobody ever said we don't do good research. Maybe we could discuss this as part of the free-rider problem to explain part of why we spend more on healthcare for basically equal results. But it does not address the unequal access.

Early preclinical development of Gleevec was carried by Swiss chemists working at Ciba, later Novartis. (Interestingly, they were looking for a treatment for chronic myelogenous leukemia, a disease associated with abnormally short chromosomes.)

When a company like Novartis takes the drug into the clinic, development becomes global (well, Europe and the US) and those development costs are spread out.

Obamanation, that's a dangerous callousness to other species you're showing there. Do you think humanity really has the moral authority to just cavalierly wipe out entire species like polio and smallpox? Those are living breathing creations of Gaia as well!

Sorry, David, no deletion here. I'm siding with Joe Veenstra. One has nothing to do with the other. Most of the work that these people do is funded by the federal government and universities. IF this translates in to new drugs, cures for diseases, so much the better.

It is a little late in the game to throw out this sort of line and expect it to fly. No one is denied healthcare in the US. The level of services might vary, but the uninsured are treated.

Ignorance said explain part of why we spend more on healthcare for basically equal results.

Not so. Compare five-year survival rates for the major cancers. The US dramatically outperforms the EU and Canada. Age of survival and surviving illness are two different animals. Because of our superior healthcare system, we survive deadly illnesses longer than our counterparts in other developed nations. Because of our lifestyle issues (which involve making dangerous and/or unhealthy choices), we die sooner than we should. US obesity prevalence, for example, sits at about 25% in the US, vs. 15% in Canada, and around 10% in France and Germany.

No, but the Nobel Prizes do create an occasion to talk about the effectiveness of federally funding of research. The bulk of the funds for the telomere research came from the NIH.

Note also how the public option competes, but does not replace the private options in medical research:

Blackburn is a professor of biology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Greider is a professor in the department of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. London-born Szostak, 56, has been at Harvard Medical School since 1979 and is currently professor of genetics. He is also affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

So, two private organizations and one public. The win also shows the value of immigration: Two of the three researchers are immigrants (Blackburn being from Australia).

garage mahal said... If one doesn't have access to or cannot afford these innovations, it doesn't do them a bit of good does it?

Well, garage, remember how twenty or so years ago only the richest wall street types could afford cell phones? really bulky, unreliable, ugly cell phones that cost tens of thousands of dollars? and how, now, cell phones are infinitely better and faster and sleeker and so darn cheap that most plans give them away for free and even the homeless have them? funny how that works!

I'm sure that President Obama wouldn't preside over the genocide of another species; I'm sure that he'll allow small communities of the smallpox virus, AIDS virus, etc. to thrive in such Gaia-foresaken out-of-the-way backwaters as Idaho, Alabama, and possibly Oklahoma.

The crisis is invented. Obama and the Democrats want their hands on the money. That's all. Money and power.

Our healthcare system isn't perfect. Nothing is. We were doing fine before Obama the Savior came along.

The Democrats have embraced a dual strategy of (1) devastating the economy with absurd environmental and anti-development legislation, and (2) conjuring up dumb solutions to solve the problem that they created. Thus, we've legislated our own oil industry out of business, driven our factories out of the country, etc.

This strategy cannot continue for much longer. The destruction is massive.

FLS and Victoria are perfectly correct: We have no need of crude capitalism to motivate innovators. These researchers, and their universities, had no interest whatsoever in future profits to be made from their research.

I'm sure that they'll immediately donate any licensing fees that they might receive to a good charity.

Take that, all you Rethuglican luddites, who think that all institutions of higher learning should be bulldozed and replaced with venues for tractor pulls!! Oh, all the times I've read calls for the demolition of research facilities in these comments.

And I say that we have no need of private for-profit research in any field. All engineering should be done by government-approved public-university professors. Hell, we'd have flying cars by now, if this had been done 20 years ago.

I would think if one was going to be very concerned about the future of basic research and drug development, one would be more concerned with Bush's prescription drug benefit than Obama's insurance policies.

If I knew how to post the excel file backing up this data, I would. But I don't.

Anyone suggesting these three winners confirm American leadership in innovation has more work to do. Our main comparison for health care purposes is the UK, home of the (infamous?) NHS. The UK is beating us in Nobel efficiency.

(My apologies re the deleted posts; I need a more efficient copy editor.)

Invited to show how anyone has been able to cash in on telomeres, a quarter-century later, "obamanation" can think only of how to artificially inflate his penis.

That is almost an admission that government subsidized research does not pay off economically.

Part of the problem with government subsidized research is that it is invariably into areas that are politically popular, instead of places that will pay off through bringing the most people the biggest health benefit.

Thus, you have far more money being spent on AIDs research than for many much more common killers. And more spent on female cancers than male by far, because (IMHO) women whine more.

I am not saying that government supported research cannot be a good thing (after all, this Internet thingy we are using right now came out of DARPA research). But, rather, it just doesn't bring much in the way of useful health care products to us within any reasonable amount of time. The research done here was very important, and so, I think, deserving of a Nobel prize. It just isn't going to save lives in the short run of a decade or so.

David - "The kind of innovation that wins Nobel Prizes has everything to do with quality health care. Why the hell do you think we have no Polio in the world, for example?."

Apples and oranges. 2 of the 3 researchers were educated in foreign countries, Australia and Britain, They all have no involvement in US healthcare, or it's quality. They are doing basic genetic research in a convenient univeristy rearch place (USA) that brings foreigners and some USA natives together.And apparantly, capitalism and the "profit motive" is absent as a motivation to excel. Though they will of course gladly take the prestige and Swedish money behind the Prize the get. Some of the Nobels in medicine may one day lead to better, higher-quality healthcare. Some may not. Just as certain Prizes in Physics may one day lead to "better quality space travel". Then again, perhaps not...

As for the polio vaccine, the effective one was developed turned out to be the Sabin one. Albert Sabin was educated in public university, and also developed vaccines against dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis while serving in the Marine Corps in WWII. Like the polio vaccine, he shunned any pursuing any patent or profit from his vaccines - considering it immoral to block drugs or vaccines that should be free to the masses. Most of his polio vaccine work was paid for by Ohio taxpayers at U of Cincinnati. He prevailed on the Eisenhower Administration to make it free to US schoolkids..and on to distributing it free to the world through Foundations..

His rival, the more famous Jonas Salk, whose vaccine has made a comeback in use...also shunned a patent and licensing his discovery to Big Pharma to profit on. "The US needs to work Government public healthcare services in other less fortunate nations, who need to distribute this to the People..and if we don't help them, the Soviets will."

A reminder again that Eisenhower and Nixon (1st President to have proposed universal health care for America) were very different in their thinking on better health for American citizens than the Goldwater-Reagan school of thought that believed the profit motive and "free market" is what made American healthcare "the envy of the world".

garage mahal said..."If one doesn't have access to or cannot afford these innovations, it doesn't do them a bit of good does it?"

My example was polio, Garage. The vaccine, which has been much improved over the last 50 years, has been made available worldwide through a variety of programs. Rotary International has spearheaded the effort recently.

From a recent news article, here are the results of that effort:

"Launched in 1988, the GPEI -- spearheaded by Rotary, the World Health Organization, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF -- has reduced the number of polio cases by 99 percent over the past two decades, from more than 350,000 cases in 1988 to an estimated 1,600 in 2008."

Rotary and the Gates Foundation have just pledged another $630 million to take the final difficult steps to complete eradication. Achieving this goal involves overcoming weaknesses in the vaccine delivery systems in a few third world and conflict afflicted areas.

Gleevec, the drug that keeps me alive, is made available at no or reduced cost by Novartis to thousands of people who can not afford to pay. In this country no one need go without the drug, regardless of their health plan, due to the efforts of the company and various private entities.

Your cynicism is sad--so much good is happening and has happened in public health and medicine throughout the world, and the United States and American companies are at the center of most of these efforts.

And why, Cedarford, do you suppose that they come to the USA to do their research? It's because we have the funding, the infrastructure, the able colleagues who can stimulate further advances and the innovative spirit to draw them here.

Talk to an employer or holder of private health insurance that saw it's cost double in the Dubya years. They will laugh at you.

Or those that looked at Medicare's 37 trillion unfunded lonf-term liability. Costs now far outstrip FICA...and Bush's big payoff to Big Pharma...free or nearly free drugs bought at full premium price from drugmakers by the US Government ....pushed that burden on future generations from 24 to 37 trillion. (Seems poor dumb Dubya was convinced by supply side ideologues that no taxes need pay for this huge new benefit or for two wars - just cut taxes and let that 'ol Reaganomics supply side magically fund all obligations...)

David said... And why, Cedarford, do you suppose that they come to the USA to do their research? It's because we have the funding, the infrastructure, the able colleagues who can stimulate further advances and the innovative spirit to draw them here.

They come to America because we built a pretty good university research system, backed by taxpayer and Foundation funding.

Which has little or nothing to do with or private healthcare system.

In fact, most private enterprise US drug companies are now "offshoring" their developmental drug research..tapping in to good basic research in USA, Australia, France, etc..to cheaper places - notably India, China, E Europe.

Same story with US drug manufacturing. The large preponderance of over the counter, prescription drugs you take have left US manufacturing behind. They are now made in Mexico, subsidized Canadian factories, Columbia, Brazil, Egypt, India, Puerto Rico, tax-free Swiss factories, Japan, Taiwan. China's move to grab jobs from Puerto Rico and US firms in Mexico was temporarily set back by Chinese QC problems with tainted milk, grain, pet food.

America has the best healthcare in the world . . . if you can afford it. I don't recall anyone claiming that our healthcare system is terrible because of the doctors, so I'm not sure what your point is.

Talk to an employer or holder of private health insurance that saw it's cost double in the Dubya years. They will laugh at you.

Only if they fail to see the inventiveness of the government in creating it: The tax deduction for employer-obtained insurance; the market domination by Medicare and Medicaid; the corrupt tort system; the various states' insurance mandates, etc.

Anyone experience anything about the easy google profit kit? I discovered a lot of advertisements around it. I also found a site that is supposedly a review of the program, but the whole thing seems kind of sketchy to me. However, the cost is low so I’m going to go ahead and try it out, unless any of you have experience with this system first hand?